How to raise earthworms with pig manure? Learn to raise high-value earthworms

   Anyone who has been to a pig farm must be deeply impressed by the lingering stench there, right? The manure that pigs excrete all day long is indeed a headache for farmers, and if not handled properly, it can even pollute the environment. But Du Ruining of Tianjin not only handles pig manure well, but also saves a lot of money from it.

    On Du Ruining's pig farm, there are 35 square concrete pools, each 21 m long and 5 m wide. The workers on the pig farm not only have to take care of the thousands of pigs, large and small, but also often have to busy themselves around these concrete pools. It turns out these pools are all used for raising earthworms, and so many earthworms are raised to deal with the smelly pig manure.

    Since pigs cannot fully digest all the protein contained in the feed during digestion, pig manure still contains some components such as nitrogen and phosphorus, and these nutrients can be used to raise earthworms. Not only that, the earthworms raised are themselves high in animal protein and highly nutritious, and can in turn be used as feed to feed the pigs.

    Old Du was secretly pleased with this clever method he had come up with that kills two birds with one stone. However, after he started raising earthworms, he discovered that raising earthworms with pig manure was not so easy.

    First, the earthworm pools have no bottom, because building a bottom would affect the growth of the earthworms.

    This is because earthworms like to live in moist soil, and the environment needs good air permeability. With no bottom and direct contact with the ground, the concrete pools can regulate the water level during drought and flooding, ensuring air permeability.

    Second, pig manure cannot be used to feed earthworms directly.

    The first time he introduced earthworms, Old Du put the earthworms in the pool and began to add pig manure. When he looked the next morning, all the earthworms had escaped. A friend who raised earthworms told him that his problem was probably with the pig manure he had fed the earthworms. Other people used cow manure to raise earthworms. What was the difference between pig manure and cow manure?

    It turns out that pig manure has a relatively strong ammonia smell, which is related to the feed the pigs eat. Pigs usually eat mostly concentrated feed, which has a high protein content and easily produces an ammonia smell. Especially for fattening pigs, a large amount of corn and soybean meal is also added to the feed. What the pigs cannot fully digest makes the ammonia smell in the manure even stronger, driving the earthworms away. On the contrary, cattle eat very little concentrated feed, and the vast majority is forage; the forage they cannot digest is excreted with the manure, so cattle manure has a relatively lighter smell.

    In fact, because pigs eat refined feed, more nutrients remain in the manure, which should be a good thing for raising earthworms, but the smell is just too strong and the earthworms cannot stand it. Old Du remembered that the feed for sows and the feed for fattening pigs are different; sow feed contains more crude fiber. Because during the production period, sows must be prevented from constipation, the protein content in the feed cannot be too high, and more crude fiber needs to be added instead, so sow manure has a lighter ammonia smell. Therefore, Old Du and the workers mixed sow manure and fattening pig manure together and let them dry and ferment. After a period of drying, the ammonia smell in the pig manure had mostly dissipated. However, when adding the pig manure, Old Du also learned his lesson and switched to adding it in separate spots so the earthworms could gradually adapt to the pig manure.

    By first fermenting the pig manure and then adding it in separate piles, this method satisfied the living conditions of the earthworms, and they settled down on Old Du's pig farm. However, this was only the beginning; the earthworms still had to reproduce more to provide more protein feed for the pig farm. Old Du thought that after the first batch of earthworms reproduced, he would not rush to use them, but let them reproduce for several more batches before using them in a concentrated way. But something unexpected happened again: many earthworms ran away again, and they were all the big ones.

    They had been living perfectly well, so why did they run away again? Old Du checked the earthworm pools one by one.

    First was humidity. Earthworms like a moist environment because 80% of their bodies are water, and if the environment is too dry, they very easily lose water. So if the humidity where they live is not suitable, the earthworms will run away.

    In order to keep the soil at a suitable humidity, the pig farm workers often sprinkle water into the earthworm pools. In summer, the temperature is high and water evaporates quickly, so in summer even more attention must be paid to frequently sprinkling water into the earthworm pools to create a moist environment for the earthworms, and the workers did this very well.

    Because they were raised outdoors, Old Du was also afraid the earthworms would not survive the winter. When winter came, Old Du had the workers spread corn stalks in the pools. Once the corn stalks were spread, it was like covering the earthworm pools with a thick quilt, playing a role in cold protection and heat preservation.